April 29, 2013

Since the Egyptian revolution of January, 2011, the democratic process has been working in fits and starts. The international press has focused its attention on the machinations of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose political party won the first round of elections handily and then forced its vision of the new constitution through the constitutional referendum of December, 2012. However, other movements and parties have also been organizing and working to proliferate political forces beyond the pre-revolutionary establishment and the typical big business interests and crony networks of neoliberal governance.

Egypt's subsidies are long-standing, many begun during the Nasser
period but becoming essential when global commodity prices rose dramatically in
the 1970s, and are now particularly urgent given Mubarak’s neoliberal policies
and their impoverishment of a substantial portion of the population. Egypt
spends close to 10
percent of its GDP on subsidies, and almost everyone agrees that the subsidies
are not effective at reaching the poorest of the poor.